lk, then into a run, with his eyes intent upon the rude dark keep that
held the promontory, now the one object in all the landscape that had to
his senses some aspect of human fellowship and sympathy.

The caterans were assured; _Dieu du ciel_, how they ran too! Those in
advance broke into an appalling halloo, the shout of hunters on the
heels of quarry. High above the voice of the breakers it sounded savage
and alarming in the ears of Count Victor, and he fairly took to flight,
the valise bobbing more ludicrously than ever on his back.

It was like the man that, in spite of dreads not to be concealed from
himself, he should be seized as he sped with a notion of the grotesque
figure he must present, carrying that improper burden. He must even
laugh when he thought of his, austere punctilious maternal aunt, the
Baronne de Chenier, and fancied her horror and disgust could she behold
her nephew disgracing the De Chenier blood by carrying his own
baggage and outraging several centuries of devilishly fine history by
running--positively running--from ill-armed footpads who had never worn
breeches. She would frown, her bosom would swell till her bodice would
appear to crackle at the armpits, the seven hairs on her upper lip would
bristle all the worse against her purpling face as she cried it was
the little Lyons shopkeeper in his mother's grandfather that was in
his craven legs. Doubt it who will, an imminent danger will not wholly
dispel the sense of humour, and Montaiglon, as he ran before the
footpads, laughed softly at the Baronne.

But a short knife with a black hilt hissed past his right ear and buried
three-fourths of its length in the grass, and so abruptly spoiled the
comedy. This was ridiculous. He stopped suddenly, turned him round about
in a passion, and fired one of the pistols at an unfortunate robber too
late to duck among the bracken. And the marvel was that the bullet found
its home, for the aim was uncertain, and the shot meant more for an
emphatic protest than for attack.

The gled's cry rose once more, rose higher on the hill, echoed far off,
and was twice repeated nearer head with a drooping melancholy cadence.
Gaunt forms grew up straight among the undergrowth of trees, indifferent
to the other pistol, and ran back or over to where the wounded comrade
lay.

"Heaven's thunder!" cried Count Victor, "I wish I had aimed more
carefully." He was appalled at the apparent tragedy of his act. A
suicidal regr